I do this job for one reason only. Or one reason aside from how I get to read e-mails from complete strangers telling me that I look funny.

And that one reason is how I get to foist my opinions off on a tolerant readership that often asks, “Where do you get those idiot ideas?” Well, many are plucked out of thin air while others are clipped from periodicals and carefully stored on my desk until they become idea jerky.

Problem is, most of these items can’t fill an entire column. But neither can I let them go.

Take a recent story about Sen. Larry Craig, R-Screwed, where he never says: “I have personal issues that I need to work out. Please understand that I am a frail human being who nonetheless cares very much about the the problems facing the West.”

Personally, I’d advise Craig to think about something Mark Twain once said: “A man is never more truthful (and endearing) than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”

Instead, he’s denying lewd conduct charges while – I love this – insisting that it is inappropriate and unpatriotic to discuss his bathroom behavior “while the nation is at war.”

Then there is a study out of the Max Planck Institute suggesting that a sense of fair play is a uniquely (and I’d say rare) human trait not shared by our chimp relatives. Which brings to mind another Twain quote: “I believe that our Heavenly Father created man because he was disappointed with the monkey.” Only I think that it was the other way around.

Now take Roberto Madrazo, a former Mexican presidential candidate who disappeared midway through the recent Berlin Marathon, then suddenly reappeared to win with an age-group record.

Or as Twain once observed, “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

And I like this report from England, where a drive to serve healthful meals in school cafeterias led to kids spending their lunch money on convenience store junk food.

Meanwhile, in Little Rock, Ark., six elderly Roman Catholic nuns of the Army of Mary were excommunicated – much as the Angels were by Boston – after the Vatican judged them heretics for believing that their order’s founder, 86-year-old Marie Giguere, is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary with God speaking through her.

The nuns stated that the church had better “open their eyes before it’s too late” and that they only believe that God “communicates through Giguere.”

Silly nuns. For starters, God communicates through the pope, who, in any case, will not tolerate female criminals in a church that has yet to excommunicate or even discipline some of the male sex offenders in its ranks and those who aided them.

“An ethical man,” wrote Twain, “is a Christian holding four aces.” Or, as I see it, all the cards.

Speaking of God, a man named Andy Schlafly of New Jersey was horrified by the “information” offered by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wanting to correct all that crazy talk about the Earth being older than 10,000 years, he created Conservapedia.com, which is designed to tell certain people that what they already believe is absolutely correct.

Now consider Peter Tork of the made-for-TV Monkees, which recorded 10 Top 20 singles in the 1960s. He claims that Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner is blocking the group’s induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

Wenner is, of course, an antique mired in a time before Americans expected their music idols to be complete fakes. Still, by comparison to many of today’s contrived sensations, the Monkees were Mozart.

Then there was this quote from Dr. Ellen Laan of the University of Amsterdam: “I think that it’s progress when we can spend two hours in this performance-driven society admitting that maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about.”

Her frightening statement came at the end of an Orlando medical conference on women’s sexual health, during which the expert assembly admitted to knowing next to nothing about what causes sexual arousal and orgasm in women.

Or as Twain once quipped, “Neither do I!”

Now take Michigan Democrat Rep. John Dingell’s lunatic suggestion that we reduce carbon emissions by removing the mortgage-interest tax deduction from all homes over 3,000 square feet.

How killing with taxes people who own larger existing homes would help air quality remains a mystery. But he did make me recall Will Rogers, who once said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

And 25 years ago, a scientist at Carnegie Mellon invented the colon-hyphen-parenthesis sideways smiley face that haunts the world like anthrax.